So, it has been a little while. This school year has been particularly overwhelming, though I can't pinpoint exactly why. I have nearly half the number of students, more than twice the planning time, and I'm no longer going through the chaos of formal evaluation (the scary kind, anyway). Year three is supposed to be the year that I can take it easy and cruise just a little. That's not to say that I do the same things year after year in the name of convenience, but it certainly shouldn't be as much of a battle as it has been in years past. At any rate...

While this is ridiculously late in the year for such photos, I'm posting some pics of what my classroom looked like before 65 chaotic teenagers made their home there 5 days a week. Perhaps it will inspire me to clean off my desk at some point this week or regain even a shred of the organization that I had established at the beginning of the school year.

Clean and shiny...way back before kids entered through the doors. There's quite a few more desks crammed in here now, too. 

Ignore the horrible colors here...I was working with limited resources. The goal is for students to check the calendar on the bulletin board to see what happened while they were out. Extra copies of handouts and assignments go in their designated folders so I'm not constantly being asked to print assignment sheets again when kids misplace them. I'm still working on how to maintain consistency with this system, though. They have a hard time understanding that this is the first place they should look, which is ridiculously frustrating, but it's still better than anything else I've come up with yet. 

I can only hope that my desk will one day be this clean again. 

Labeled binder clips to organize papers that need to be graded and recorded. 

Bins to keep handouts for each day organized so I'm not searching all over for that stack of papers that I need to distribute (which is particularly annoying when I have a class of new students and they're staring at me in awkward silence while I tear my room upside down looking for the syllabus I was supposed to give them...